November 2, 2022
5 Signs Your B2B Tech Company Needs a Better Thought Leadership Program
In today’s market headwinds, B2B Tech companies need to establish sustainable growth. Thought Leadership Marketing is one of the most proven methods to move prospects down the funnel with minimal, or even no, interaction. However, given the huge recent market shifts, your team may require a significant shift in order to prioritize Thought Leadership Program as much as is necessary. Below are five signs your company urgently needs to make that shift.
1. Your company’s voice is being drowned out by bigger deeper pocketed competitors.
No matter how much you invest in event sponsorships and other paid distribution, it’s hard to achieve the “Share of Voice” (a.k.a. SOV) to make a big impact on your brand awareness or message association in the market. In a scenario like this, it’s not about yelling louder. Rather, it’s about making everything you say worth listening to. Excellent thought leadership allows your company to “punch above your weight” in getting your name and message out there. Not only is great Thought Leadership high ROI, but it significantly improves the ROI of your other marketing investments such as event sponsorships and paid media.
2. You don’t feel like you’re fully leveraging your company’s PR agency relationship.
Choosing a Public Relations agency is like signing up for a gym membership. You only get out of it what you put into it. Investing in PR is one part of the process. Investing in news-worthy proprietary or unique perspectives and insights is the key missing ingredient. Come up with better ideas and materials for your PR agency to use, and watch your PR ROI soar.
3. It’s hard to move clients past transactional vendor relationships.
Company relationships have similarities to human relationships. To bond and grow closer, you need to show your clients that you’re a source of value beyond just the products or services that you sell. They will appreciate you more when you’re a source of insights, guidance, and of alternative perspectives. That’s exactly where Thought Leadership shines. Imagine the reaction when you offer your clients a deep-dive demystification course on an emerging technology that will impact their bottom line, or when you show them new ways to respond to industry changes about which they may not be experts, have not considered, or may not even have identified. Imagine their delight when you present them findings from a custom research study offering a deep dive into the needs, motivations, and pain points of their customer base.
4. Sometimes it feels like Marketing, Product, and Sales are working in their own silos.
One great benefit of excellent Thought Leadership is it helps provide your staff with a shared vision or purpose, a clear direction toward which everyone can and should head, and a widely understood reason for why your company is differentiated, which boosts morale.
5. The market doesn’t fully appreciate your product suite’s total package of benefits and advantages.
This one sounds like it’s typically the job of Product Marketing, not Thought Leadership. That’s because the best Thought Leadership doesn’t need to explicitly describe product functionality or contrast your products with competitors. But Thought Leadership can be just as, if not more, effective at product differentiation by providing the market with the necessary context within which your company’s differentiation becomes obvious. For a non-tech example, if you sell electric gardening tools in a market full of gas ones, excellent Thought Leadership can direct your prospects’ attention to the share of greenhouse gas emissions that come from landscaping equipment, the noise pollution from gas tools, and the rise of city ordinances banning gas blowers.
If your team would benefit from world-class Thought Leadership
efforts aimed at a B2B tech buyer universe, please reach out HERE to set up an initial consultation.